I realize I never commented on the elections. I suppose this came from a sense of oversaturation – every other news source and blog in the country was providing endless coverage of the election, so why should I add to it?
But I’d like to point out two different articles over at Grist, which discuss the potential impact of the elections on environmental issues. We know that some progress has been made; if anything, we’re currently rid of men like Richard Pombo (that would be the California representative who wanted to sell off all the national parks). This first piece asks the question “How green will the 110th Congress be?” and looks at the placement of environmentally-friendly Democrats in some key positions, including the chairs of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee and the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee. The second, however, highlights the fact that we still have quite a bit of work to do in keeping our legislators on track regarding the environment and sustainability issues more broadly. Titled “Celebrate But Organize,” it focuses on the fact that sustainable agriculture still faces many challenges, among them the continual subsidies doled out by Congress to large agribusinesses. Tom Philpott writes, “In short, for every bought-and-paid-for Republican that the public sent packing, the agribusiness lobby has a reliable Democrat waiting at the gate.” He goes on to discuss the importance of the Farm Bill that will be decided by the new Congress, the current way in which corn-based ethanol will figure into it (not positively) but also, ways in which you can act to support sustainable agriculture and support the creation of good, sustainably-focused legislation in the 2007 Farm Bill.
The other major notable point about the elections, from a more local perspective at least, is that the Green Party here in Illinois is now officially the state’s third party, as Rich Whitney pulled in 10% of the vote in the race for governor. As he says in his concession speech, (which he labels a concession/victory speech) we “will have to stop referring to ‘bi-partisan politics’ and start referring to ‘tri-partisan politics’” here in Illinois. I think the speech is pretty encouraging and worth taking a look at; he encourages folks to check out the Illinois Green Party,who actually works on issues between elections, rather than just saving up for the next election campaign. (The most readable copy of this speech that I’ve found is up on Rich’s facebook profile; it’s also up at soapblox.net, fairly far down the page.) I wonder though, if it will actually appear “tri-partisan” the next time around; it seems there may be a lot of work to do with the local media, who blatantly ignored Whitney’s presence throughout most of this race. Everyone was all up in arms this year about fair election processes, but it seemed predominately focused on voting machines; seems like if we pass legislation in the next few years about the election process, we should fix not only machines but also aim to balance the way the media handles election coverage. It seems unlikely that one can have a fair election if the main source of information for people on potential candidates isn’t required to actually report on all the candidates. I guess that just makes another reminder for the fact that really the work of citizens is not just in voting but instead in working diligently between elections to influence better legislation and government.
